COURTESY : bachelor of social work (BSW)

Profession

American educator Abraham Flexner in a 1915 lecture, “Is Social Work a Profession?”, delivered at the National Conference on Charities and Corrections, examined the characteristics of a profession concerning social work. It is not a ‘single model’, such as that of health, followed by medical professions such as nurses and doctors, but an integrated profession, and the likeness with medical profession is that social work requires a continued study for professional development to retain knowledge and skills that are evidence-based by practice standards. A social work professional’s services lead toward the aim of providing beneficial services to individuals, dyads, families, groups, organizations, and communities to achieve optimum psychosocial functioning. # ISO certification in India

Its seven core functions are described by Popple and Leighninger as:

1. Engagement — the social worker must first engage the client in early meetings to promote a collaborative relationship
2. Assessment — data must be gathered that will guide and direct a plan of action to help the client
3. Planning — negotiate and formulate an action plan
4. Implementation — promote resource acquisition and enhance role performance
5. Monitoring/Evaluation — on-going documentation through short-term goal attainment of the extent to which client is following through
6. Supportive Counseling — affirming, challenging, encouraging, informing, and exploring options
7. Graduated Disengagement — seeking to replace the social worker with a naturally occurring resource^[48]

Six other core values identified by the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW)^[49] Code of Ethics are:

1. Service — help people in need and address social problems
2. Social Justice — challenge social injustices
3. Dignity and worth of the person
4. Importance of human relationships
5. Integrity — behave in a trustworthy manner
6. Competence — practice within the areas of one’s areas of expertise and develop and enhance professional skill

A historic and defining feature of social work is the profession’s focus on individual well-being in a social context and the well-being of society. Social workers promote social justice and social change with and on behalf of clients. A “client” can be an individual, family, group, organization, or community. In the broadening scope of the modern social worker’s role, some practitioners have in recent years traveled to war-torn countries to provide psychosocial assistance to families and survivors. # ISO certification in India

Newer areas of social work practice involve management science. The growth of “social work administration” for transforming social policies into services and directing activities of an organization toward achievement of goals is a related field. Helping clients with accessing benefits such as unemployment insurance and disability benefits, to assist individuals and families in building savings and acquiring assets to improve their financial security over the long-term, to manage large operations, etc. requires social workers to know financial management skills to help clients and organization’s to be financially self-sufficient. Financial social work also helps clients with low-income or low to middle-income, people who are either unbanked (do not have a banking account) or underbanked (individuals who have a bank account but tend to rely on high cost non-bank providers for their financial transactions), with better mediation with financial institutions and induction of money management skills. Another area that social workers are focusing is risk management, risk in social work is taken as Knight in 1921 defined “If you don’t even know for sure what will happen, but you know the odds, that is risk and If you don’t even know the odds, that is uncertainty.” Risk management in social work means minimizing the risks while increasing potential benefits for clients by analyzing the risks and benefits in the duty of care or decisions. # ISO certification in India

In the United States, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, professional social workers are the largest group of mental health services providers. There are more clinically trained social workers—over 200,000—than psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric nurses combined. Federal law and the National Institutes of Health recognize social work as one of five core mental health professions. # ISO certification in India

Examples of fields a social worker may be employed in are poverty relief, life skills education, community organizing, community organization, community development, rural development, forensics and corrections, legislation, industrial relations, project management, child protection, elder protection, women’s rights, human rights, systems optimization, finance, addictions rehabilitation, child development, cross-cultural mediation, occupational safety and health, disaster management, mental health, psychosocial therapy, disabilities, etc. # ISO certification in India

Roles and functions

Social workers play many roles in mental health settings, including those of case manager, advocate, administrator, and therapist. The major functions of a psychiatric social worker are promotion and prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. Social workers may also practice: # ISO certification in India

• Counseling and psychotherapy
• Case management and support services
• Crisis intervention
• Psychoeducation
• Psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery
• Care coordination and monitoring
• Program management/administration
• Program, policy and resource development
• Research and evaluation

Psychiatric social workers conduct psychosocial assessments of the patients and work to enhance patient and family communications with the medical team members and ensure the inter-professional cordiality in the team to secure patients with the best possible care and to be active partners in their care planning. Depending upon the requirement, social workers are often involved in illness education, counseling and psychotherapy. In all areas, they are pivotal to the aftercare process to facilitate a careful transition back to family and community. # ISO certification in India

Qualifications

The education of social workers begins with a bachelor’s degree (BA, BSc, BSSW, BSW, etc.) or diploma in social work or a Bachelor of Social Services. Some countries offer postgraduate degrees in social work, such as a master’s degree (MSW, MSSW, MSS, MSSA, MA, MSc, MRes, MPhil.) or doctoral studies (Ph.D. and DSW (Doctor of Social Work)). Increasingly, graduates of social work programs pursue post-masters and post-doctoral studies, including training in psychotherapy. # ISO certification in India

In the United States, social work undergraduate and master’s programs are accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. A CSWE-accredited degree is required for one to become a state-licensed social worker. The CSWE even accredits online master’s in social work programs in traditional and advanced standing options. In 1898, the New York Charity Organization Society, which was the Columbia University School of Social Work’s earliest entity, began offering formal “social philanthropy” courses, marking both the beginning date for social work education in the United States, as well as the launching of professional social work.

Several countries and jurisdictions require registration or licensure of people working as social workers, and there are mandated qualifications. In other places, a professional association sets academic requirements for admission to the profession. The success of these professional bodies’ efforts is demonstrated in that these same requirements are recognized by employers as necessary for employment. # ISO certification in India

Professional associations

Social workers have several professional associations that provide ethical guidance and other forms of support for their members and social work in general. These associations may be international, continental, semi-continental, national, or regional. The main international associations are the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) and the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW). # ISO certification in India

The largest professional social work association in the United States is the National Association of Social Workers. There also exist organizations that represent clinical social workers such as the American Association of Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work. AAPCSW is a national organization representing social workers who practice psychoanalytic social work and psychoanalysis. There are also several states with Clinical Social Work Societies which represent all social workers who conduct psychotherapy from a variety of theoretical frameworks with families, groups, and individuals. The Association for Community Organization and Social Administration (ACOSA) is a professional organization for social workers who practice within the community organizing, policy, and political spheres. # ISO certification in India

In the UK, the professional association is the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) with just over 18,000 members (as of August 2015).

The Code of Ethics of the US-based National Association of Social Workers provides a code for daily conduct and a set of principles rooted in six core values: service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence.

Trade unions representing social workers

In the United Kingdom, just over half of social workers are employed by local authorities, and many of these are represented by UNISON, the public sector employee union. Smaller numbers are members of the Unite the Union and the GMB. The British Union of Social Work Employees (BUSWE) has been a section of the trade union Community since 2008. # ISO certification in India

While at that stage, not a union, the British Association of Social Workers operated a professional advice and representation service from the early 1990s. Social Work qualified staff who are also experienced in employment law and industrial relations provide the kind of representation you would expect from a trade union in the event of a grievance, discipline or conduct matters specifically in respect of professional conduct or practice. However, this service depended on the goodwill of employers to allow the representatives to be present at these meetings, as only trade unions have the legal right and entitlement of representation in the workplace.

By 2011 several councils had realized that they did not have to permit BASW access, and those that were challenged by the skilled professional representation of their staff were withdrawing permission. For this reason BASW once again took up trade union status by forming its arms-length trade union section, Social Workers Union (SWU). This gives the legal right to represent its members whether the employer or Trades Union Congress (TUC) recognizes SWU or not. In 2015 the TUC was still resisting SWU application for admission to congress membership and while most employers are not making formal statements of recognition until the TUC may change its policy, they are all legally required to permit SWU (BASW) representation at internal discipline hearings, etc.

Use of information technology in social work

Information technology is vital in social work, it transforms the documentation part of the work into electronic media. This makes the process transparent, accessible and provides data for analytics. Observation is a tool used in social work for developing solutions. Anabel Quan-Haase in Technology and Society defines the term surveillance as “watching over” (Quan-Haase. 2016. P 213), she continues to explain that the observation of others socially and behaviorally is natural, but it becomes more like surveillance when the purpose of the observation is to keep guard over someone (Quan-Haase. 2016. P 213). Often, at the surface level, the use of surveillance and surveillance technologies within the social work profession is seemingly an unethical invasion of privacy. When engaging with the social work code of ethics a little more deeply, it becomes obvious that the line between ethical and unethical becomes blurred. Within the social work code of ethics, there are multiple mentions of the use of technology within social work practice. The one that seems the most applicable to surveillance or artificial intelligence is 5.02 article f, “When using electronic technology to facilitate evaluation or research” and it goes on to explain that clients should be informed when technology is being used within the practice. # ISO certification in India

Social workers in literature

In 2011, a critic stated that “novels about social work are rare”, and as recently as 2004, another critic claimed to have difficulty finding novels featuring a main character holding a Master of Social Work degree. # ISO certification in India

However, social workers have been the subject of many novels, including:

• Bohjalian, Chris (2007). The double bind: a novel (1st ed.). New York: Shaye Areheart Books. ISBN 978-1-4000-4746-8.
• Cooper, Philip (2013). Social work man. Leicester: Matador. ISBN 978-1-78088-508-7.
• Barrington, Freya (2015). Known to Social Services (1st ed.). USA: FARAXA Publishing. ISBN 9789995782870.
• Desai, Kishwar (2010). Witness the night. London: Beautiful Books. ISBN 978-1-905636-85-3.

• Fadiman, Anne (1997). The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-37453-340-3.
• Irish, Lola (1993). Streets of dust: a novel based on the life of Caroline Chisholm. Kirribilli, N.S.W: Eldorado. ISBN 1-86412-001-0.
• Greenlee, Sam (1990) [1969]. The spook who sat by the door: a novel. African American life. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2246-8.
• Konrád, György (1987). The case worker. Writers from the other Europe. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-009946-8.
• Henderson, Smith (2014). Fourth of July Creek: A Novel. ISBN 978-0-06-228644-4.
• Johnson, Greg (2011). A very famous social worker. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse Inc. ISBN 978-1-4502-8548-3.
• Johnson, Kristin (2012). Unprotected: a novel. St. Butt, MN: North Star Press. ISBN 978-0-87839-589-7.
• Kalpakian, Laura (1992). Graced land (1st ed.). New York: Grove Weidenfeld. ISBN 0-8021-1474-1.
• Lewis, Sinclair (1933). Ann Vickers (First ed.). Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Company. OCLC 288770.
• Mengestu, Dinaw (2014). All our names (First ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-385-34998-7.
• Sapphire (1996). Push: a novel (1st ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf; Random House. ISBN 0-679-44626-5. The basis of the movie Precious.
• Smith, Ali (2011) There But For The, Hamish Hamilton, Pantheon.
• Ungar, Michael (2011). The social worker: a novel. Lawrencetown, N.S: Pottersfield Press. ISBN 978-1-897426-26-5.
• Weinbren, Martin (2010). King Welfare. Bakewell: Peakpublish. ISBN 978-1-907219-18-4.